That was the assessment from Brian Moynihan, who is approaching his fourth anniversary as CEO of Bank of America Corp.
/quotes/zigman/190927/delayed/quotes/nls/bacBAC Those are years that have seen him sell off big chunks of a bank used to decades of empire building, work to soothe miffed regulators and government officials, and aggressively settle mortgage-related lawsuits while other banks decided how hard to fight them.

“This has been a painful four years in terms of our shareholders and recognizing all this,” said Moynihan, in an interview in New York on Wednesday with Wall Street Journal managing editor Gerard Baker.

All told, the bank has spent a staggering $40 billion under his direction to settle legal claims, and top of mind for investors is how much more might be coming. Moynihan stressed that he couldn’t predict the government’s next move – a poignant point, considering J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.’s
/quotes/zigman/272085/delayed/quotes/nls/jpmJPM ongoing feud with the government about how much it should have to pay to settle legal claims. And Moynihan, who just turned 54, has been more inclined to fly under the radar than to outright criticize the government, like his J.P. Morgan counterpart Jamie Dimon.

Moynihan did note, though, how much work the bank has already done. “I would trust,” he said, “that there’s probably nobody more educated about these cases than Bank of America, unfortunately.”

All told, it was a conversation that veered both serious (Americans need to rethink the real value of homeownership, said Moynihan, whose bank is one of the country’s biggest mortgage lenders) and otherwise (Baker asked about the Red Sox, also a poignant point considering that Moynihan lives outside Boston).

As might be expected for someone who commands the country’s second-largest bank by assets, Moynihan defended the big-bank model, saying that Bank of America’s economies of scale have allowed it to save money for customers and that the “universal bank” model is widely accepted throughout the world. (James Gorman, CEO of Morgan Stanley,
/quotes/zigman/182639/delayed/quotes/nls/msMS made a few of the same defenses when he spoke in New York last week.)

Among the other highlights:

‘I’m not going through this again’:

An audience member asked Moynihan what he’d do if, in some future financial crisis, the government asked him to buy a failing institution and promised not to hold Bank of America liable for that company’s misdeeds. It was a not-subtle reference to J.P. Morgan, which says that the bulk of its legal problem stem from Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual, two companies that the government asked it to buy.

Moynihan said he thought the government would probably approach someone smaller. “If a large institution failed, I’d find it hard to believe that they’d want to make a very large institution larger,” he said. And besides, he added, “We’re just not doing acquisitions.”

Moynihan said that his job as the head of Bank of America is “completely different” from that of his two immediate predecessors, Ken Lewis and Hugh McColl. And in 2009, when he interviewed with the board of directors for the CEO job, he said, they asked him what he’d do if a portfolio wasn’t growing quickly enough, implying that they were asking him how he’d handle a big acquisition.

“I said, ‘You’ll have a new CEO, because I’m not going through this again.’”

On the Republican Party’s disillusionment with the Tea Party:

Moynihan demurred from touching that one. “I’m trying to think of what upside there is in getting involved in that discussion,” he said. “My personal political beliefs shouldn’t shape this company.”

A shakedown?

Moynihan declined to answer a question about whether the government was unfairly prosecuting big banks.

“What’s fair and unfair is kind of an interesting debate I have at 10 o’clock at night by myself,” he said.

Buyer’s remorse:

Bank of America was triumphant when it scooped up Countrywide in 2008. But anyone “who had known what was going to happen in mortgages” would not have done that deal, Moynihan said. “But the reality is, nobody knew.”

What he worries about:

Getting managers who understand that it’s better to grow the company responsibly than at breakneck speed. Europe’s slow economy. And teenage drivers. He has three kids, all high school or college age.

On the Red Sox:

“We got so lucky this year, it will take us 10 years to worry about again.”

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